New Spotify Apps Add Liner Notes, Album Covers And Hot Or Not

The world’s favorite music streaming service Spotify has just added a bunch of new music apps. Spotify apps are widgets that run inside Spotify and let you access the music in various ways. The first apps launched a few months ago on the Mac (they’re still not on the iPhone), and the second wave has just dropped. I have taken a quick look, and there are a few gems in there.

Most of the Spotify apps are ways to build playlists. either pre-curated or automatically. The former often come from magazines or music sites. Previously we had the Guardian and We Are Hunted, now we have Def Jam records and Warner in the game.

The standouts in the “curated” section, though, are The Complete Collection and The Legacy Of. The former brings liner notes to digital music. There are featured artists, and booklets for 150 albums (with more being added). The list right now skews to bad hip hop and chart music (50 Cent and Lady Gaga), but the Verve Remixed section is a nice surprise.

The Complete Collection combines playlists with album art, and the liner notes can be magnified and read with a loupe. What this app really does though is make you wish for an iPad version. Seeing this stuff on your computer is one thing. Siting back and listening to the music via AirPlay, and swiping through the album booklets with your hands as God intended is another experience altogether.

The Legacy Of is even more suited to the iPad. Weekly-added playlists are joined by full-screen photos, biographies and even playlists of bands and tracks that influenced the featured artists. Right now you’ll find Hall and Oates, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The auto-generated lists are good too. Tweetvine takes any track posted to Twitter with the hashtag #NowPlaying. And yes, I totally just Rick-rolled it. Hot or Not lets you vote songs up or down, and Filtr biulds playlists based on your Facebook friends.

If you’re a Spotify user, these will all show up in the App Finder. Go check them out.